1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to reproduction of a multimedia image, and more particularly, to a storage medium for recording text-based subtitle data including style information, and a reproducing apparatus and method for reproducing text-based subtitle data including style information recorded on the storage medium.
2. Related Art
Recently, a video stream, an audio stream, a presentation graphics stream for providing subtitle data, and an interactive graphics stream for providing buttons or menus to interact with a user are multiplexed in a moving picture main stream (also known as an audio-visual “AV” data stream) recorded on a storage medium for providing a high definition (HD) multimedia image having high image quality. In particular, the presentation graphics stream for providing subtitle data also provides a bitmap-based image in order to display subtitles or captions on an image.
However, bitmap-based subtitle data has a large size and is multiplexed with other data streams. As a result, in order to guarantee a maximum bit transmission rate required by a specific application, the number of units of the subtitle data, which can be included in a multiplexed main stream, is limited. In particular, when multi-lingual subtitles are provided, problems relating to a limited number of units of subtitle data may occur.
Also, due to the bitmap-based image, production of the subtitle data and edition of the produced subtitle data are very difficult. This is because such subtitle data is multiplexed with other data streams such as video, audio and interactive graphics streams. Moreover, an output style of the subtitle data cannot be changed in a variety of ways easily, that is, to change one output style into another output style of the subtitle data.